Ten Ways an App is Inapplicable For Your Business

An app is a modern day business’s ultimate marketing weapon. This is even more so for startups. If not properly designed, an app can backfire badly. So let’s take a little stroll through the dark lanes of the corporate fallen. Littered with the desecrated remains of businesses who failed at mastering the arts of app design. Pay attention new entrepreneurs, here, are ten of the best ways of creating the worst app for your business.

Poor design

Well this is simple enough. So simple that the companies who make apps belonging to this category were simply poor planners. Poorly designed apps include everything from annoying-to-use to even deceiving. Safe to say a company creating an app that is too difficult to use will certainly not be attracting customers through it. Whether it maybe down to poor IT talent at their disposal or misguided business ideas, a poor app is considered to be a cardinal sin for any company. It is also a predominant way of ruining a company’s sales.

Ignoring the competition

It’s an old but pretty important cliché that you’re only as good as your competition. In the business realm this usually translates into being mindful of your competitors. Only then can you truly make it big. Any company needs to fine tune their products in accordance with what rivals are doing. When it comes to apps, it’s vitally important that a company engineers its app to be more attractive and useful than rivals. Or at least appear to do so. A company not considering what the competition is offering will rarely get it right. They may well end up creating a borderline useless tool.

Lack of capital

Ok now this technically is not a company’s fault. Many businesses and startups are hard pressed for money. Usually battling hard to create an amazing product out of measly finances. However a shortage of money often does result in less skilled individuals designing a company’s app. As a result, the accompanying inability to enhance the company qualifies it as a major cause of failed apps.

Timing of launch

Now this is something well and truly within every company’s control. Timing is a key factor for the success or failure of an app. When most consumers have been influenced towards a product, chances are they are more likely to rummage through the app for details or better yet, they will use the app to make a purchases! If you launch the app too early, there will be little interest and little customer traffic. If you launch the app too late, consumers’ interest will have subsided.

Improper app marketing strategy

Herein lies perhaps the most crucial of all the cogs that drive an app’s workings. The app is meant as a company’s ultimate marketing weapon. A wrong marketing strategy not only means that the app would fail but it would also hamper sales. There may be numerous reasons why an app’s marketing flounders. One of the most common reasons is that enough hype is not generated surrounding the app’s release. Recent advents have created numerous facilities for boosting one’s app. Avenues such as app store optimization, and using advertisement on other popular apps, offer interesting ways of promoting an app. Hence properly marketing an app is becoming increasingly incumbent for any company! The results otherwise can be grim indeed. Gideon Kimbrel on Forbes has more here on how to market an app the right way.

Building apps natively per platform may not be a wise use of money

Here, the problem is not actually with an app itself but with the sense behind its creation. Eventually this leads to the failure of its purpose. Companies often have apps made for their business that are tailored differently for each of the myriad of platforms, covering all manners of devices. True, it may constitute a hard hitting strategy, designed to aggressively storm the market. However in some cases, especially for startups, it simply is not money wisely spent.

An app can be made internally just as fast

Outsourcing has been a pivotal side of modern business. It has allowed companies to rope in a variety of skilled help, aiding in putting their businesses on the map. However with regards to the time invested in an app, a company could theoretically create one internally just as quickly. Now this raises the question of whether there truly is a need for some high charging software firm. Once more, there is nothing wrong with the app itself but the inefficient splash of cash!

Outsourcing can be a permanent tie down

Yes handing over much needed work to people who can do it better than you is a must at times. However working relationships that outsourcing sets up are usually a permanent affair. This can give rise to its own issues. Even in the case of satisfactory service, a plethora of factors can influence the quality of a partnership dynamic, often rendering it to be somewhat similar to a bad pre-nup. Once you enter one of these, whether you like the relationship or not, you’re stuck.

Lack of self influence on the app

Those development and outsourcing people really are a source of bother because we’re back at them again. Surely a development firm knows more about making an app than the company. However in that regard, outsourcing can often curtail a company’s own influence on it. As folk proverbs go, someone’s sword in someone else’s hand usually doesn’t make for a good battle plan. Hence, there is a possibility of creating apps nowhere near what was envisaged by those who asked for it. This indeed is a scenario that usually precludes the app’s success at enhancing the company’s business.

App-product disparity

Sometimes there is nothing wrong with a company’s app. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with its workings with the development firm either. But still all of it culminates to a massive digital backfire. The reason, it just wasn’t right for their particular product. Different products need different ways of catering to their target customers. Hence it is only logical that it applies to apps as well. So tailoring apps to cater to the specific type of product the startup is making is absolutely crucial! An app must not only be great by itself, but great for the product in question. And failure at achieving this is one of the major reasons why they fail.

And that’s our list. From technical blunders to simply unfortunate circumstances, a startup must avoid all these pitfalls. Otherwise an app could in fact just as easily ruin your business as it could elevate it. As a result, it is all the more imperative that companies dedicate significant effort to building their apps with regards to finances, positive interactions with developers and distribution of the finished app. After all, what brings much good must be tended to with care.